Pretty printing XML in Python

Question

What is the best way (or are the various ways) to pretty print XML in Python?

Answer 1

Another solution is to borrow this indent function, for use with the ElementTree library that's built in to Python since 2.5. Here's what that would look like:

from xml.etree import ElementTree

def indent(elem, level=0):
    i = "\n" + level*"  "
    j = "\n" + (level-1)*"  "
    if len(elem):
        if not elem.text or not elem.text.strip():
            elem.text = i + "  "
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i
        for subelem in elem:
            indent(subelem, level+1)
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = j
    else:
        if level and (not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip()):
            elem.tail = j
    return elem        

root = ElementTree.parse('/tmp/xmlfile').getroot()
indent(root)
ElementTree.dump(root)